{"id":17961,"date":"2016-02-18T12:34:14","date_gmt":"2016-02-18T17:34:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=17961"},"modified":"2016-02-18T12:34:14","modified_gmt":"2016-02-18T17:34:14","slug":"i-feel-like-a-despised-insect-coming-of-age-under-surveillance-in-new-york","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=17961","title":{"rendered":"‘I Feel Like a Despised Insect’: Coming of Age Under Surveillance In New York"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u201cI FEEL LIKE A DESPISED INSECT\u201d: COMING OF AGE UNDER SURVEILLANCE IN NEW YORK<\/a><\/h3>\n
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I<\/span>N THE SPRING\u00a0of last year, two New York women were arrested on charges of supporting ISIS, following a joint investigation by the New York Police Department along\u00a0with federal agencies. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, Queens residents Noelle Velentzas and Asia Siddiqui \u201cplotted to wreak terror by creating explosive devices.\u201d\u00a0Central to the disruption of this \u201cterror plot,\u201d authorities\u00a0boasted, was the work of an undercover police detective, although no concrete\u00a0plan was ever\u00a0hatched. Indeed, as\u00a0The Intercept<\/i>\u00a0reported<\/a>, the unsealed\u00a0criminal complaint<\/a>\u00a0reveals the undercover officer\u2019s role in pushing the two women to turn their controversial political sentiments into something more dangerous. In this sense, the arrests were similar to a number of\u00a0post-9\/11 terrorism prosecutions,\u00a0half of which\u00a0have involved the use of informants or undercover agents, according to a\u00a02014\u00a0report<\/a>\u00a0co-authored by Human Rights Watch, which raised\u00a0concerns over \u201cquestionable\u201d and \u201cdiscriminatory\u201d tactics.<\/div>\n
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At Brooklyn College, where I teach, news of the arrests prompted\u00a0a\u00a0chilling realization among students on campus. Years earlier, this same NYPD officer\u00a0had come to Brooklyn College, \u201cconverted\u201d to Islam, and spent the next four years infiltrating student life. In November,\u00a0Gothamist<\/a><\/em>\u00a0broke the story:\u00a0\u201cMalike Ser\u201d was the cop\u2019s alias; she was known by the\u00a0nickname \u201cMel.\u201d There were no links between Mel\u2019s years\u00a0on campus and the investigation and arrest of Velentzas and Siddiqui (neither of whom went to Brooklyn College or any of the city\u2019s public colleges) \u2014 a fact the NYPD has since acknowledged. What remains unclear is what, exactly, Mel was looking for on our campus.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cI FEEL LIKE A DESPISED INSECT\u201d: COMING OF AGE UNDER SURVEILLANCE IN NEW YORK IN THE SPRING\u00a0of last year, two New York women were arrested on charges of supporting ISIS, following a joint investigation by the New York Police Department along\u00a0with federal agencies. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, Queens residents Noelle Velentzas and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[10,1611,1239,446,447,12480,1771,765,793,5567],"class_list":["post-17961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-10","tag-human-rights-watch","tag-is","tag-isis","tag-islamic-state","tag-jeanne-theoharis","tag-nypd","tag-surveillance","tag-terrorism","tag-the-intercept"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17961"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17961\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17963,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17961\/revisions\/17963"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}